Cloudflare Deal Advances Smartling’s Multilingual Mission

August 5, 2011

The partnership we’ve just announced between Smartling’s website translation platform and Cloudflare’s category-leading website acceleration, security and analytics service will, I predict, contribute hugely to Smartling’s avowed mission of making the entire web multilingual.

One of Cloudflare’s core features is its global Content Delivery Network which, with 13 edge nodes around the world, radically speeds up the international delivery of web pages. The Smartling app, meanwhile, increases the value of that speedy delivery by enabling Cloudflare users to deliver those pages in the recipient’s native language.

Why does this matter? Because any website that is not available to consumers in their native languages is leaving money on the table.

The fact is, over 70% of today’s internet users speak a native tongue other than English, and they are 6 times more likely to make an online purchase in it (even if they can read English). That means that fast page delivery alone is not enough – the page delivered must be in its recipient’s native or preferred language. Add on the fact that the current ROI for localization is $25 for every $1 invested, and translating a site becomes a real no-brainer.

Now Cloudflare’s huge number of users have access to Smartling’s cloud-based app, which:

removes the need for expensive and complex new coding or web development

eliminates upfront costs for everything other than translation itself

allows users to choose between professional, crowdsourced, or machine translation (or any combination of the three)

makes translation more efficient by presenting text in context and eliminating file downloads/uploads

makes it much much easier to manage the translation and site update workflow

makes it possible to get a new language site online in weeks (rather than months or years)

Cloudflare itself is using Smartling’s Translation Delivery Network to translate its website and application into 27 languages. To start, the German, Indonesian, Portuguese and Norwegian sites are well under way.